Yeomen lose direction then lose game to Case

Men's tennis team hopes to become more consistent

The Oberlin men's tennis team has had a rough week. Friday and Saturday they had a rocky weekend tournament which was followed a few days later by a wacky, sitcom-esque road trip to Case Western Reserve University on which they got lost, got found, and then got trounced.

The Great Lakes College Association tournament was hosted by the College of Wooster this past weekend. The Yeomen traveled to the tournament with high hopes, only to be demolished by Wooster in the first round. The "never-say-die" attitude of the team helped it battle back to a 6-1 thrashing of Albion College in the second round.

Head coach Chris Barker said, "We need to work on consistency, which is why we are going to hit tons and tons of balls in practice. It's all about repetition."

On Wednesday the Yeomen were set to travel to Case Western Reserve University for a match. The tennis team had some difficulty finding the Riverview Racquet Club due to ambiguous directions. On top of this, CWRU coach bumped the match to an earlier time slot with little notice. As a result, the Yeomen were late to the match and had to perform after only a short, 10-minute warm-up.

The frustrated Yeomen lost 7-0. Barker said, "We didn't play well and we didn't play consistently. We were missing our number-four player due to an important academic commitment. First-year Eric Shin stepped up and played well. That shows how even we are across the board, we all have to work on the same things."

The Yeomen still have an impressive winning record of 8-5, but good doesn't seem to be good enough. Senior Adam Shoemaker, who plays the number-one spot in singles and doubles, said, "We've been kind of disappointed about how we've been playing. People are starting to pick their games. We're shooting to get a place in the conference tournament."

As the Yeomen prepare to travel to Wooster again on Saturday, even the coach expects to see a good rematch. Barker said, "We know they're a good team, but these aren't teams we should be getting blanked by. We are capable of beating them, we're just slow in starting."